Fifteensquared

Solving time approx 20 mins.

I seem to remember the last Taupi was seriously tricky, but this one was OK. A lot of very clever and succinct clues that required a bit of thought, but only one word I didn’t know (23d), and one clue where I couldn’t figure out the wordplay (9a).

ACROSS
1 CORUSCATE (court case)* - nice obvious anagram to start with. I always feel more confident if 1 across goes in straight away.
9 ANGEL - but what’s that about causing one’s suspension? Don’t understand this. [But got it later - AN=one + GEL=suspension]
11 FL(AMBO)Y,ANT - ambo=pulpit was something I already knew from somewhere…
15 TRO(O)PER - O in REPORT rev.
17 EXE,CUTE - I’m not keen on banker=river. Probably the most common and worst crossword cliché.
20 IN,CH(urch) - good clue. I didn’t see through this for a while, even after I had the answer.
22 CANDLEWICK - cryptic definition. My granny used to have a candlewick bedspread.
27 THE,S.E. - more than this=these. Nice one.

DOWN
2 RIG,MA,ROLE - pretty straightforward, but “to play” is only there for the surface reading.
3 S(ALUBRI=burial*)O,US
4 ANODYNE (done any)* - is a painkiller, nothing wrong with that!
8 AL(DEBAR)AN - Alan Ayckbourn is a well-known playwright (although I didn’t recognise the names of any of his plays). Aldebaran is a red giant in the constellation Taurus.
13 MONGRELISE (merge lions)* - one of the last ones I got (mainly because I had it in my head at first that it was a nine-letter word, so I tried to make an anagram of “lions,bats”. Conjured up a weird image in my brain, and proved that you can find absolutely anything on the internet!
16 PROM,1,SING
19 F(ED)ERAL
21 C,ACHE
23 K,EDGE - easy wordplay, which was just as well because I didn’t know that to kedge is to move a ship (with a small anchor also called a kedge).
24 FLEE(t)